How Will We Fight?

In considering the question “How will we fight?”, this article begins by examining the threats we face from conventional, insurgent, and hybrid enemies as well as terrorists and super-empowered individuals. It then outlines how America can fight effectively against each threat—as well as identifying the deficiencies in our current force structure that will hinder that response. The analysis argues that America needs a well-balanced, medium-weight joint force. It then provides recommendations for each of the services, as well as special operations forces, to achieve that goal. It concludes by describing what is needed to insure our force is capable of the rapid innovation in wartime required of successful nations.     

Mapping the road to development: a methodology for scaling up participation in policy processes

Understanding local variability in context and mobilising local participation to define development agendas are widely accepted development strategies. There remain, however, significant challenges to the systematic and effective inclusion of local communities and households. Projeto MAPLAN, a pilot project in Ceará, Brazil, is a joint effort of the public sector and civil society designed to create a process of participatory development planning which integrates local-level contextual variations. In this effort, the use of a Participatory Geographic Information System (PGIS) stimulates the participation of community members in analysing their needs, goals, and priorities. The visualisation of these factors through easily understood maps facilitates communication and contributes to a democratic and transparent planning process, thus permitting the articulation of local priorities with the state-level planning apparatus. MAPLAN represents part of a shifting paradigm for rural development planning in the state and provides the tools for the effective inclusion of citizen voice in development policy.     

Considering the council’s counsel: Advisor influence and political change

Comment on paper by Brian Goff regarding the influence of political advisors on observable measures of political outcomes.     

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.     

Two Cheers for Capitalism?

According to a popular view that I call “two cheers for capitalism,” capitalism’s effect on development is ambiguous and mixed. This paper empirically investigates that view. I find that it’s wrong. Citizens in countries that became more capitalist over the last quarter century became wealthier, healthier, more educated, and politically freer. Citizens in countries that became significantly less capitalist over this period endured stagnating income, shortening life spans, smaller gains in education, and increasingly oppressive political regimes. The data unequivocally evidence capitalism’s superiority for development. Full-force cheerleading for capitalism is well deserved and three cheers are in order instead of two.     

Global scientific production,international cooperation,and knowledge evolution of public administration

Public administration is a discipline with considerable history, and is also a diverse, interdisciplinary field in social science. To analyze its evolution, discover the present research foci, and predict future development trends, this study applied scientometrics visualization technology to evaluate over 72,000 scientific articles from the 1920s to 2020s. This research referred to the SSCI and JCR databases to gather scientific data of the discipline and the journals' impact factor. Consequently, paper citations, cited journals, journal co-citations, author co-citations, authoritative papers, top countries, productive institutes, average references, and research collaboration trends were analyzed on the bases of the published literature. This study found top productive journals in the discipline, discovered productive countries and institutes, present the research foci, and predicted future development trends. Through this study, scientific production, international cooperation, and knowledge evolution mode of public administration research offers a clear knowledge map of the public administration discipline.     

Capital appreciation bonds and the cost of borrowing

A Capital Appreciation Bond (CAB) is a financial instrument that is most attractive as a resource-flow management instrument. It bridges multiple fiscal years for jurisdictions experiencing rapid growth, potentially stretching for decades, but may also be used by localities experiencing fiscal distress. Using debt issuance data by independent school districts in Texas, who utilized almost all such bonds in the state, we present empirical evidence that CABs are associated with both the service and fiscal pressure factors. We further observe that, though the threat from CABs in terms of borrowing costs may have been exaggerated, enacting limits on debt repayment ratios (ratio of payment size at maturity to premium size) was likely the right legislative intervention.     

A biomechanical study of the human vertebral artery with implications for fatal arterial injury

We studied the biomechanical behaviour of ring and strip specimens from along the length of 18 vertebral arteries taken from 16 subjects aged 28-90 years, in order to consider some of the factors which may play a role in vertebral artery rupture. The method was chosen to allow a comparison between circumferential distension (ring samples) and longitudinal extension, (strip samples). The samples were extended between the jaws of a tensile testing apparatus until the specimen broke and a number of biomechanical parameters were derived. These were the percentage extension to break, the tensile strength, Young's modulus and the peak load. There were a number of important findings. The vertebral artery was shown to be susceptible to longitudinal stretching with a number of strip samples breaking when extended by as little as 16-20%. The tensile strength and load at peak of the strip specimens were correspondingly lower than for the ring samples. Marked intersubject variations were shown for all these parameters and prominent changes in behaviour occurred along the vertebral artery. This study indicates that the artery may be susceptible to head and neck movements which cause the vessel to stretch, and intersubject variations in behaviour may be one important explanation for the marked differences in outcome which appear to exist in subjects who suffer broadly similar head and neck insults.     

A comparison between direct and indirect methods available for human bite mark analysis

Comparison techniques used in bite mark analysis are many and varied, the choice of technique depending largely on personal preference. Until recently, no one technique has been shown to be better than the others, and very little research has been carried out to compare different methods. This study evaluates and compares the accuracy of direct comparisons between suspects' models and bite marks with indirect comparisons in the form of conventional traced overlays of suspects' models or a new method using photocopier-generated overlays. Artificial bite marks in pigskin were made using standardized sets of models and recorded as photographs and fingerprint powder lifts on tape. The bite mark photographs and fingerprint lifts were coded and randomized so that a blind comparison could be made with the models, traced overlays, and photocopier-generated overlays using a modified version of the American Board of Forensic Odontology Scoring (ABFO) System for Bite Marks. It was found that the photocopier-generated overlays were significantly more accurate at matching the correct bite mark to the correct models irrespective of whether the bite mark was recorded photographically or as a fingerprint lift. The photocopier-generated overlays were also found to be more sensitive at matching the correct bite marks to the correct models than the other two methods used. The modified ABFO scoring system was able to discriminate between a correct match and several incorrect matches by awarding a high score to the correct match.